Staying fresh during the taper

"Trust thy taper" is a phrase I've repeated many a time in the weeks leading up to a significant race.  We have to balance the recovery process our bodies need from the rigors of training, with keeping the body fresh and ready to perform on race day.  The more experience a runner, cyclist or triathlete has, the quicker the body tends to recover.  Thus, the taper can focus more on honing in on a specific goal rather than simply recovering.  If you think of a training program being like a pyramid: Base training at the bottom and the race at the top, the taper is that final narrowing near the top, where the apex is the race itself.  With 2 weeks to go before the key race, all efforts should be shorter and less intense.  The long run shortens and the heart rate moves back toward the same levels we were striving for during the base building phase of training, save for a few brief pick ups at marathon pace.  The tempo/speed work becomes much shorter, with a greater focus placed on full recovery between any interval.  My last blog, Speed work in Disguise, substituted hill repeats for a Yasso 800 type work out.  Yesterday came the "long" run that will be the longest run between the Dress Rehearsal of last week, and Showtime; the marathon.  Not too long where you may damage your legs or risk injury, but enough "time on feet," so that the next time you pass this point during the race, it's not such a shock to the system.  It's an important run when it comes to being able to maximize your chances at a personal best, but an important run to skip, or cut significantly shorter, if the risk of injury or the need for the body to fully recover is great.  This is when a lot of new marathoners end up injured as they don't "trust thy taper."  They panic, thinking they have to do more, and end up running too long, and at marathon pace, and scratch their head when they just don't seem to have the "legs" on race day.

Stats from my Taper period long run: 2 hours, 14.2 miles, 8:17 average moving pace, 139 average Heart rate, 1000 feet of elevation gain/loss, NO injuries!